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“Valentino and Velvette just went out, aren’t you going with them?”
Vox lets his head loll against the couchback, meeting Charlie’s confused eyes where she’s craning over him like a bloodhound for psychological issues. “Let’s just say my partners’ ideas of a relaxing night are very different from mine.”
“They just ditched you?”
“I,” Vox clarifies, “gave them permission to go without me. Trust me, they always give me a perfunctory invite even when I never accept. You can now, ah, rest easy knowing my inability to have fun is a preference and not a punishment.”
“Well…” Against his wishes, Charlie slings herself over the couch arm and hops down to sit beside him. “How do you like to spend a nice night in?”
With Valentino and Velvette. “I planned on organizing the file cabinets in the basement, or finishing inventory—”
“Nooo,” Charlie groans, pressing her hands to her face in dismay. “That’s just more work! Don’t you want to do something you actually enjoy?”
“I actually enjoy being on top of my work.”
“Here, hold on, I have a better idea.”
Before Vox can protest, Charlie lurches forward and nabs the remote from the coffee table. She aims it at the disgustingly old television across the room, turning it on with a soft rasp of static that likely only Vox can hear (and that grinning freak upstairs), then shoots him a look that screams eh? Eh? Praise me for my ingenuity and heal my glaring daddy issues while you’re at it?
“You should really let me update that with a newer model,” Vox tries. Charlie frowns.
“Let’s watch a movie! I don’t have anything else to do.”
There are a million reasons why they should not do this, but interestingly, none come to mind as Charlie channel surfs, eventually landing on some overwrought telenovela from the Lust Ring. It’s vapid, but so were ninety percent of the flicks VoxTek churned out while the studio was still standing. There’s no art in television nowadays, no skill. Vox might've been the biggest progenitor of mindless consumerism in Pride, but at least he made the choice to abandon his integrity and sell out—these hellborn hacks can’t abandon something they never had.
Whatever.
“This is idiotic,” Vox says. He settles into the cushions, knees splayed. “Cheating plotlines have been done to death.”
“I always thought they were unnecessary,” Charlie offers. So, so desperate for camaraderie, so eager to dig her little fingers into Vox’s footholds and pry him apart. It grates at him. But he’s—damnably—weak for the encouraging lilt in her voice, the way her earnestness pulls him inexorably between hunger and submission, the needy, cloying thing at the core of her singing in tune with his own.
They watch TV.
The shows don’t get better. Vox begins to enjoy himself anyway. Charlie couldn’t have known that mocking the shit out of the actors and writing is a beloved hobby of his, because he hasn’t done it since he and the other Vees no longer have a living room of their own to indulge, but it settles him all the same.
Charlie, as it turns out, once you get her over the hurdle of ‘being mean to people, even ones who can’t hear you, is bad,’ has many delightfully strong opinions. She flutters over into the kitchen briefly to microwave popcorn, sitting down even closer when she returns, and by the time Vox thinks to check the clock, they’ve wasted a solid two hours and Charlie’s hooves are firmly in his lap, the popcorn bag tucked against his chest where they’ve been sharing it for the last six episodes.
The lobby slips into a low, rosy twilight. When Charlie wiggles in his lap, trying to get more comfortable, Vox curls a hand over her ankle to steady her, thumbing through soft, downy fur. It’s nice. She doesn’t stop him.
He's never going to live it down, but—it’s not the worst way to spend an evening.
